Since her earliest races, two-time nationwide 800m champion Lindsey Butterworth has embraced working as an opportunity to check and develop her limits.
“In elementary college, I had at all times simply sort of had a love and fervour for it,” says the 30-year-old North Vancouver native, who’s now primarily based in Burnaby. “I at all times did nicely in races, and actually loved working from a younger age. I feel that keenness and love for simply working generally has actually fuelled my profession in high-performance competitors.”
And highly effective gasoline it has been. Butterworth gained the Canadian junior 1,500m title in 2011 and represented Crew BC within the occasion on the 2013 Canada Summer season Video games. From 2011 to 2015, she ran for Simon Fraser College, successful NAIA bronze within the 1,500m in 2011. As a senior in 2015, she gained the NCAA DII 800m indoor and out of doors titles.
In 2017, Butterworth gained 800m bronze for her first senior podium on the Canadian nationwide championships. She then represented Canada on the Jeux de la Francophonie and made her debut on the World Athletics Championships. She gained her first nationwide title within the 800m earlier than ending the season by working a then-personal greatest 2:00.81 on the NACAC Championships.
In 2019, she represented Canada on the Pan Am Video games in Lima and the World Athletics Championships in Doha. On the Canadian Olympic Trials in June 2021, Butterworth broke via the two-minute barrier for the primary time to win 800m gold. She made her Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020.
“I like the sensation of actually pushing myself,” Butterworth says. “I like placing in that effort the place I really feel like at finish of a exercise or the top of a race, I’ve actually gone previous my limits and may really feel the quantity of effort that I put in. There are such a lot of little objectives alongside the best way which you could set for your self that provide that sense of accomplishment and really feel such as you’re actually attaining one thing.”
She notes the satisfaction of bodily self-improvement isn’t reserved for elite athletes. Butterworth says a part of the great thing about working—and what makes it such an inclusive exercise—is that it invitations individuals of all physique sorts and talents to progress on their very own private journeys.
However this fact might be clouded by lingering stereotypes about working that, frustratingly, hold some individuals away from the game. “I feel there’s nonetheless the stereotype that runners have to be tall and slim. We have to hold breaking down the boundaries regarding physique picture,” says Butterworth. “Working is for each particular person, and you’ll really feel comfy ranging from proper the place you’re. You’ll be able to actually be taught and develop from strolling, working or no matter your plan could also be, and there isn’t a particular physique picture or physique kind that’s conducive to that.
She means that these new to working “begin out sluggish and take a look at setting objectives that you already know you possibly can obtain, to work as much as moving into that run or attending to the extent that you simply need to get to. Everyone is totally different, and I feel it really works nicely for lots of people to start out off with only a walk-run program the place you possibly can sort of ease into working and construct that energy, to have the ability to present your self that you simply’re in a position to do it.”
Butterworth’s confidence within the energy of incremental aim setting extends past working. She says it helped maintain her in the course of the lengthy, troublesome months on the top of the pandemic. “Getting via COVID might be the most important problem I’ve confronted. It was a problem for thus many individuals. Not having any races on the calendar, and having a lot uncertainty of what the longer term appeared like actually allowed me to return to the fundamentals. It allowed me to give attention to what my plan was for the day and what my aim was for coaching for that day. And in the long run, I achieved my greatest aim but: making the Canadian Olympic workforce.”
Her dedication to persevering with to construct on her objectives additionally not too long ago noticed Butterworth, who earned her bachelor’s diploma in Well being Sciences from Simon Fraser College in 2015, graduate from SFU’s Public Well being grasp’s program.